Tomis Kapitan: Deliberation
and the Presumption of Open Alternatives-- The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website --What is the point of asking
yourself what to do and then thinking hard about it if all the thinking is settled in advance? What is
the point of trying to figure out how to run your life if determinism governs your
every reflection? Do we not have to suppose that determinism is false if we
are to take our own deliberations seriously? The question has long been
taken to bedevil the doctrine of determinism. It has been supposed that
determinists can have no good answer to it. Well, Professor Kapitan is one good
philosopher who thinks otherwise. He
takes
things forward. His piece will repay your close attention.

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By deliberation we understand practical reasoning with an end in view
of choosing some course of action. Integral to it is the
agent's sense of alternative possibilities, that is, of two or more
courses of action he presumes are open for him to undertake or not. Such acts may
not actually be open in the sense that the deliberator would do them were he
to so intend, but it is evident that he assumes each to be so. One deliberates
only by taking it for granted that both performing and refraining from any
of the acts under consideration are possible for one, and that which is
to be selected is something entirely up to oneself.What is it for a course of action to be presumed as
open, or for several courses of action to present themselves as a range of
open alternatives? Answering these questions is essential for an
understanding of deliberation and choice and, indeed, for the entire issue of free
will and responsibility. According to one common view, a deliberator takes the
considered options to be open only by assuming he is free to undertake
any of them and, consequently, that whichever he does undertake is, as
yet, a wholly undeter- mined matter. Built into the structure of
deliberation, on this theory, is an indeterministic bias relative to which any deliberator
with deterministic beliefs is either inconsistent or condemned to a
fatalistic limbo. An unmis- takable challenge is thereby posed: is there an
alternative conception of the presuppositions underlying deliberation more
congenial to a deterministic perspective yet adequate to the data? Convinced that
there is, I develop a partial account of deliberation which, though highly
similar to the aforemen- tioned view, diverges at a critical juncture. I. The Postulate of Freedom
That a deliberator presumes himself to be free to undertake any one
from a range of alternatives seems undeniable. While such
an attitude might not involve the agent's knowledge that there are
undetermined actions, choices or deliberations, it is often thought to include his
belief to this effect. Perhaps Kant had this in mind when he set forth his celebrated
postulate of freedom:
It IReason] must regard itself as the author of its
principles inde- pendent of foreign influences.
Consequently, as practical reason or as the will of a rational being it must
regard itself as free) that is to say, the will of such a being cannot be
a will of its own except under the idea of freedom.1
This passage has been interpreted as implying that agents must adopt an
indeterministic stance with respect to their own
practical thinking, or some portion thereof, that this is essential to the
conviction that their choices are their own.2 If freedom and agency are so mated
within practical reason, it follows that any deliberator who also believes his
future acts and choices tc be (already) determined is ipsofacto inconsistent.
My object is not an exegesis of Kant. Many contemporary philosophers . advocate this interpretation of the presumption of
open alternatives, for example, Hector-Neri Castaneda, who writes:
One of the fundamental facts about practical thinking is that ii hinges on the agent's presupposition that he can
choose from severa alternative courses of action open to him. This does
not, of course imply, as Kant firmly stressed, that the agent is
free in the sense thai his acts, or his volitions, are uncaused. Perhaps the
presuppositior is just a dialectical illusion (to use Kant's term)
of practical thinking If it is, the universe is ugly: given the biological
and psychologica primacy of practical over contemplative thinking, we
are, thus condemned to presuppose a falsehood in order to do
what we thinl practically. We must in any case include the
presupposition oi freedom in our analysis of practical thinking ... 3
But what falsehood is it (if the universe is "ugly") that an agent is
condemned to presuppose in order to engage in practical thought
- that he can choose from among open alternatives, that he is free, or
that some of his own acts or volitions are uncaused? In the passage cited these
disjuncts are conflated Castaneda evidently holds that if someone assumes he
can choose then he is committed, qua rational being, to the presupposition
that he is free and, thus, that some of his choices are uncaused and
undetermined.
Richard Taylor and others arrive at the same conclusion by focusing on agency; one who deliberates about what to do must
assume that his eventual undertaking is his to choose, "under his control" or
"up to himself". Were he to suppose that his choice will be the outcome of
antecedent conditions over which he has no control, he could not take his
eventual act to be up to himself. Taylor is insistent, in short, that assuming
the latter is to suppose one's choice alone will determine the undertaking,
not some other conditions existing prior to choice. Consequently, a deliberator
must take his choice to be undetermined.4 With a slightly different
emphasis, Nicholas Denyer argues that since determinism entails the future to
be fixed and necessary, but that one deliberates only about what is taken as
contingent, it follows that "a deliberator cannot then consistently believe that
his actions are deter- mined by events prior to his deliberations."5
Denyer stresses the modality embedded within the presupposition of freedom; to
hold that one is free, that one both (an perform an action and ran refrain
from performing it, is to assume that one's future undertaking is as yet a
contingent matter. This assumption, he claims, conflicts directly with the
belief that one's choices and actions are already determined by past or present
conditions. Reflecting both approaches, Peter van Inwagen concludes that
since we all believe in our own freedom,
. . . to reject free will is to condemn oneself to a life of perpetual logical inconsistency. Anyone who rejects free will
adopts a general theory about human beings that he contradicts with
every deliberate word and act.6
That a deliberator does not view himself at the mercy of an indifferent
causal network is, to an extent, unquestimable', his
assumption of self-agency, of his power to choose, is at once a recognition of
his partial independence from the flow of events and of his ability to shape an
indeterminate future. The Kantian postulate of freedom, coordinating agency
and contingency, is well-grounded in the phenomenon of choice, and there
is no intent to oppose it here. Yet, what this presumption of freedom
amounts to is not something which the data unequivocally reveal. The
reading so far encoun- tered, henceforth labeled the "Standard
Interpretation", must be measured against the overt dissent of those who, while
deliberating, take their actions to be caused by their volitions, and these volitions,
in turn, to be terminal points of deliberations whose every phase is
determined. To believe in free will while taking it to be an illusion is not a
comfortable position to be in. But for this very reason, the presence of deliberating
determinists, while not refuting the Standard Interpretation, motivates
development of and interest in a rival account. II. The Presumption of Efficacy
To fix intuitions, let us consider an example of a man on a leisurely
hike through the countryside who unexpectedly comes to a
fork in the path and stops to deliberate about which branch to follow.
Suppose, as he looks down each path and weighs the advantages and disadvantages
of taking it as opposed to the other, a companion asks him about what
he is thinking. We can imagine the following exchange:
Companion: Do you feel that you can take either of the two paths?
Hiker. Certainly, I can take either of the paths, depending upon which one I choose.
Companion: Can you tell, at this stage, which path you will eventually take?
Hiker. No, not now; I've not yet made up my mind on the matter. Companion: Arc you aware of anything which will cause
you to take, or to choose, either the path to the right or the one
to the left?
Hiker. Well, I hadn't thought about that, but now that you ask I guess that I must say no, I am unaware of any such
thing; as far as I can tell it is entirely up to me which path I take.
Companion: Would you say, then, that you are free to
choose either the path to your right or the one to the left?
Hiker. Indeed, haven't I just told you that I can choose either?
Let us assume the hiker's responses to be typical of what one might
expect from a normal deliberator satisfying at least minimal
conditions of rationality, and so let us exploit the example as a springboard for
conjectures about deliberation. His response to the initial question,
for instance, immediately suggests an underlying attitude; he takes each
alternative to be open only because he feels that he would perform it if he chose
to and that, otherwise, he would refrain from so doing. That is, he assumes
his will to be both necessary and sufficient for the action, viz., that
his choice would be efficacious in bringing about his performance or
non-performance of any of the considered options. Generalizing, we propose a
schema attributing what can be called a presumption of efficacy:
(PE) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he presumes that he would A if and only
if he were to choose to A.
A schema of this sort conceals much. A more detailed version would
require temporal indices fixing the times of the presumption,
choosing and doing, and, in many cases, probability qualifiers on the
biconditional within the scope of 'presumes', when the agent does not think
his intentional efforts will be guaranteed success. The term 'choose' may
give way to 'decide', 'intend', 'undertake', 'try', etc., though in using
'choose' I assume that choice is a species of intending to do something or other.
In addition, the occurrences of 'he', 'his' and 'him' within attitudinal scope
should be taken to convey the agent's self or first-person reference, and hence are
limited as to their possible substituends.7 For the present, these
refinements can be left implicit.
The embedded biconditional in the consequent of (PE) poses no special problem, whether construed subjunctively or
indicatively. Obviously the assumed linkage between A-ing and choosing to A is
not purely logical, but causal, and thus context-bound. That is to say, the
agent takes his A-ing to be consequent upon his choice gwen circumstances as
they are, a qualifier implicitly within attitudinal scope which could be
more precisely exhibited by a restricted universal quantifier over circumstances.
This reading allows the agent to be mistaken in his presumption of efficacy
without saddling him with suppositions he might recognize to be
inconsistent - as would be permitted on an external reading of the qualifier. An
important feature of (PE), of course, is that the deliberator takes his
choosing to be an essential factor in causal chains leading up to either his doing
or refraining. This is crucial to the sense of agency; that the action is
under his control stems partially from the supposition that he would do it
only through his own conscious effort.
A word about 'presumes'. It would be incorrect to think that a
deliberator is always conscious, via some prepositional attitude,
that the alternatives he is weighing are open to him. More likely, certain
dispositional states are involved, e.g. beliefs. But since 'belief has
calcified in the lexicon of some to imply an ability to articulate the content, perhaps
what we want are lower- level doxastic states - better conveyed by terms like
'feels', 'assumes' or 'takes for granted' - states for which corresponding
linguistic abilities may be lacking. For convenience, 'presumes' shall be used
to indicate doxastic attitudes gencrically, allowing the character of the
relevant dispositions to fluctuate among various doxastic levels.8 III. The Presumption of Contingency
At first glance, (PE) might be thought to be all that there is to the presumption of open alternatives. Recalling the
conditional analysis of freedom championed by G. E. Moore and others, why not
say that a deliberator takes a course of action to be open just
in case he believes it possible that he perform it and possible that he
refrain, with the modalities unpacked conditionally as indicated by the consequent
of (PE)? Unfortuna- tely, even if one accepts the equivalence, the
conditional analysis no more provides for the agent's sense of freedom than it does
for an account of freedom itself: to take a course of action as possible
in that one would do it if one chose will not suffice for taking it as open.
Nadia, upon entering the local ice cream shop, might believe that she would eat
chocolate ice cream if she chose, but may also realize that if she did she would
break out in a horrible rash. She might even dislike the taste of chocolate
and have formed a belief that because of this and her fear of a rash she will
be caused not to choose chocolate ice cream. Believing that her not eating
chocolate ice cream is already determined, therefore, she no longer considers
it an open alternative despite her acceptance of the conditional.9

It is tempting to say that a deliberator must also
assume that it is possible for her to clinnue a considered alternative, and it
is precisely this that Nadia lacks. It is evident, however, that applying the
conditional analysis to this sense of possibility would merely postpone the
difficulty besides raising familiar problems about choosing to choose.10
Perhaps such reflections have led some to suggest that if an agent deliberates
about A-ing then he assumes that his A-ing is still a contingent matter and that,
consequently, nothing yet determines his choice either to A or not to A.
Nobody, as Aristotle empha- sized, deliberates about that which is impossible or
necessary. Of course, to avoid a facile refutation of determinism it is
essential to view the modality as within attitudinal scope, so that we have, (1) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open
alternative for him only if he presumes that his A-ing is contingent, which implies that he also takes his not A-ing to be
contingent.11 Alter- natively, one could speak of his choosing (intending,
undertaking, etc.) A as contingent, and again add that the schema is to be
qualified by temporal parameters, i.e., the agent assumes, while
deliberating, that his A-ing at t is, as of yet, contingent.
The problem now is to give some account of the modality in (1), for it
is certain that not just any sort of contingency will do.
Mere logical contingency is not sufficient, nor, for that matter, any other
sort of contingency fixed solely by reference to a body of laws of nature. Instead, a
modality which includes reference to the actual course of events, to the world
of particular objects and conditions, is required, viz., a relativized,
concrete modality. Let us say that a state of affairs (event, proposition, etc.) P
is contingent relative to a set of conditions S just in case neither P nor not-P is a
consequence of S. The contingency is concrete if S contains particular facts
or conditions, and unqualified with respect to time t if S contains all
conditions existing prior to and at t.12
For Taylor and Castaneda, the contingency in (1) is, at least, causal
in that the agent assumes that there do not exist, nor have
existed, conditions causally sufficient for his (t)-ing at the time in
question. One could, alter- natively, drop mention of causation, as van Inwagen
does, and say that the agent assumes his A-ing is not a consequence of any
set of conditions (plus laws of nature) antecedent to and including the time
of deliberation. In either case, the agent takes the contingency to be
fixed with respect to all standing conditions, past and present. Denyer, even
more strongly, opts for a type of absolute contingency; in no sense is the
agent's A-ing taken as necessary or impossible, or, in other words, it is not
a consequence of any set of truths. A deliberator must, he contends, assume
that neither the proposi- tion that he will A nor the proposition that he will
not A is already true, so that no truth about what happens in the future entails
a proposition to the effect that he will A or that he will not A.
Each of these construals of (1) is a variant of what I have previously
called the Standard Interpretation. In the present context
its claim is that one who takes his A-ing to be open assumes it to be contingent
relative to all conditions (facts, events, propositions) existing
(obtaining, occurring, being true) prior to and including the time at which the
assumption is held. This unqualified modality requires the deliberator to
consider his A-ing to be, as yet, undetermined by those same conditions,
hence, undetermined simpliciter.
To minimize complexities, define determinism broadly as the doctrine that each state of the world is fully determined by
antecedent states, where P is determined by Q just in case the existence
(obtaining, occurrence, truth) of Q is sufficient for the existence of P. Following
Denyer and van Inwagen, determinism implies that at any instance there is
just one possible future--in the unqualified or causal sense of 'possible'. Of
importance is the fact that (2) a determinist assumes that whatever he will do
(choose, under- take, etc.) is already determined.
To locate an inconsistency within the beliefs of a deliberating
determinist now seems easy; for as a deliberator, by (1), he
takes his future act to be yet undetermined, but as a determinist, by (2) he assumes
the very opposite, that it is already determined.
But matters are not so simple. To say that a determinist who
deliberates about a range of actions A1,...,An supposes that
whatever he will do is already determined is not to imply that he takes his
Ai-ing to be determined, 1 i n. The quantifier 'whatever'
in (2) falls within the scope of his assumption, so that he need not believe of any
specific action that it is already determined. We cannot, then, automatically
attribute to the deter- minist who deliberates about whether to A the bald
inconsistency of both believing that his A-ing is determined and that it is
not.
One could argue from the claim that it is impossible to deliberate
about what one knorns one will do.13 If one knows one
will A then there is no point in deliberating about whether to A; the issue is
already settled and A-ing is no longer open but closed. Indeed, i/this is so it
seems fair enough to generalize to belief as follows:
(3) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only ifhe does not yet
believe that he will A.
Now it is implausible that the consequent of (3) be satisfied if one
believes one's A-ing is determined, that is, for minimally
rational agents, (3) yields:
(4) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he does not yet believe
that there are conditions sufficient for his A-ing.
So, the argument goes, satisfying the consequent of (4) renders
inconsistent any determinist who believes he will undertake at
least one of the alternatives about which he deliberates. But this reasoning is
also deceptive. Schema (3) is plausible only if negation has larger scope than
the attitude within the consequent and, if so, it ascribes no belief at all
to a deliberator. (4), however, generates the inconsistency only when negation has
smaller scope, in which case it derives no support from (3). The confusion
stems from the fact that expressions of the form 'he does not believe' are used
to express both disbelief and nonbelief - an unfortunate ambiguity,
but devastating for the argument at hand.
At the same time, this argument indicates where the inconsistency is to
be found, if the deliberator is minimally rational and
believes he will undertake one of the alternatives. For, by (1), he assumes of
each alternative that his undertaking it is contingent and, thus, that there is,
or will be, a future undertaking which is, as yet, undetermined. This
consequence, nn the Standard Interpretation, involves a belief which does
conflict with that ascribed in (2), and the ascription of an
inconsistency to deliberating deter- minists is secured.
A showdown with the Standard Interpretation over (1) is inescapable. That deliberation is wedded to a sense of contingency
is manifest in our example of the hiker. But examine his response to the
companion's third question. Taken literally, the words 'as far as I can
tell' suggest an interpre- tation of (1) in terms of epistemic contingency; a
deliberator assumes his A- ing to be contingent relative to what he knows.
However, more seems involved. I may, for instance, believe I will not fly
to Copenhagen tomorrow and thus I do not deliberate about so doing, yet I may
not. know what I believe (perhaps some unforeseen emergency will call
me to Copenhagen). The action is impossible relative to what I believe
and so does not appear open to me, though it is contingent with respect to
what I actually know. The words 'as far as I can tell', in fact, point to a
broader construal of the modality in terms of doxastic contingency so that (1) would
give way to something like
(5) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for
him only if he presumes that his
A-ing is contingent relative to what he then believes,where 'then', occurring before 'believes', refers to
the time of presumption.
(5) says, simply, that the agent takes no set of his beliefs to be
sufficient for his A-ing or for his not A-ing.
As a necessary condition on deliberation (5) appears
uncontroversial, but before judging whether it captures the full flavour of
(1) a further issue must be addressed. Given that the modality falls within
attitudinal scope is the same to be said for the qualifier 'relative to what he
then believes'? If it has an external occurrence then the modality would be
fixed by the entire body of the agent's beliefs with the consequent of (5)
reading: for every subset S of x's beliefs, x presumes that his A-ing is contingent
relative to S. The problem here is that since no one consciously
rehearses all his beliefs while deliberating he may overlook what they entail or even
what he believes they entail. Suppose at 10 a.m. Mr. Hawkins, having decided
to take his son bowling at 3 p.m., acquires the bclieFthat he will
take his son bowling then. At 2 p.m., temporarily overlooking his earlier
resolve, he deliberates about playing golf at 3 p.m.. Given all that he believes
(dispositionally) at 2 p.m. it is not true that he assumes it possible that he play
golf at 3 p.m. and, so, (5) would fail to formulate even a necessary condition.
Weakening the conse- quent to refer to only some subsets of x's beliefs
would saddle the condition with the same insufficiency that affected epistemic
contingency. An external occurrence of the qualifier, in short, renders (5)
unsuitable.
A solution is to insist upon an internal occurrence. This allows us to
take the hiker's response at face value; by using the
words 'as far as I can tell' he relativizes the modality to what he then take!
himself to believe. As such, the occurrences of both 'he' and 'then' in the qualifier
function in just the way that 'his' does within the scope of 'presumes',
namely, as devices for attributing self-reference to the agent (see note 7).
A residue of ambiguity lingers. There are questions whether the scope
of 'what he then believes' is to include that of the
modal operator and whether 'what' indicates a quantifier occurring outside or
inside the scope of 'pre- sumes'. The first, I think, can be answered
affirmatively since the qualifier specifies the character of the modality. The second
turns on a choice between, roughly, (i) x presumes that if S is any set
of his beliefs then his <j)- ing is contingent relative to S, and (ii) there is a
set S such that x presumes that S is the set of his beliefs and his d)-ing is
contingent relative to S. (i) bears a structural accord to the Standard
Interpretation where quantifiers implicitly occur within attitudinal scope; its
satisfaction is a minimal require- ment. (ii), on the other hand, would seem to imply
that a deliberator consciously reviews all that he takes himself to
believe whenever the dis- positional presumption ascribed in the consequent of
(5) is activated. Though (ii) is perhaps not to be ruled out, (i) is a
more cautious reading. We arrive, thus, at a version of (5) which can be
labeled the presumption of contingency:
(PC) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he presumes
that if S is any set of his beliefs then his A-ing is contingent
relative to S.14
It follows immediately from (PC) together with (PE) that anyone who
takes his A-ing as contingent relative to his beliefs
thereby takes his choosing to A to be similarly contingent, assuming, once again, minimal
rationality.
What, then, can be said to favour this doxastic interpretation over the
Standard Interpretation of (1)? The issue is largely
empirical, and a full- fledged defence of (PC) must await the presentation of
additional proposals which as a body are to be measured against the data
(see section VI). But three minor considerations merit attention here.
First, (PC) does provide a sense of contingency useful for explaining some cases
of non-deliberation, e.g., that of Nadia and the chocolate ice cream.
Second, one must avoid defending the Standard Interpretation by appealing to
(3) and its supposed derivative (4), even if these are conditions on
deliberation. The derivative guarantees only that a deliberator does not believe
his A-ing to be determined, not that he assumes it to be undetermined, and a
confusion over the scope of negation in (3) and (4), I suspect, is one reason for
the initial appeal of the Standard Interpretation. Finally, the very existence
of deliberating deter- minists who deny holding indeterministic beliefs
constitutes some evidence that they do not. Of course, this observation must be
tempered by the notorious difficulty of establishing non-belief,
particularly in this manner, but as inconsistencies are not to be lightly ascribed,
it shifts the burden of proof to the opposition.15 IV. The Analysis
Both (PE) and (PC) formulate necessary conditions for a course of
action to be presumed as open by an agent; jointly, they are
sufficient. With temporal parameters implicit once again, we have:
(PO) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open course of action for him if and only if
(i) he presumes that he would A if and only if he were to choose
to A, and (ii) he presumes that if S is any set of his beliefs
then his A-ing is contingent relative to S.
In yet other words, an agent takes his A-ing as open just in case he
assumes that his will is efficacious and that he both can A
and can refrain from A-ing. From this basic analysis the other properties of the
presumption of open alternatives can be derived (see sections V and VI
below).
Nothing has been said about the underlying action theory that a
principle like (PO) might require, specifically, about what a
course of action is. The schematic letter 'A' is intended to have expressions
designating what are often called "action-types" as substituends, whether
simple or compound. However, for a theory admitting compound courses of
action though not compound action-types, (PO) is limited, and any
attempt to extend or adapt the proposals would require more groundwork. An
appraisal of (PO) must hear this in mind, but two points can be made here.
First, if we view x's not A-ing at t as the complement of x's A-ing at t then
it is not difficult to see that (PO) yields the desired result that a course of
action is presumed as open by an agent if and only if its complement is as well.
Second, it is plain that deliberation can also be hypothetical, as when one
contemplates what to do if some condition P holds, e.g., whether to complain if
one loses.16 Courses of action deliberated about on the supposition that P
holds may be said to be open-relative-to-P. It is easy enough to construct an
analysis of this notion, in turn, along the lines of (PO) with the obvious
adjustments in both of the clauses (i) and (ii). Once accomplished, and we
acknowledge conditional intentions, then the following should be a targeted
theorem: x presumes that his A-ing is open-relative-to-P just in case x
presumes that "his A-ing if P" is open for him.
Where (A1, .. ., An) is a set ofn distinct courses of action, then the
central principle on the presumption of open alternatives is
no surprise: (POA) an agent presumes that (A1, .. ., An) is a
range of open
alternatives for him if and only if (i) for each Ai , 1 i n, he presumes
that Ai is open for him, and (ii) he presumes that not
all of (A1, .. ., An) are conjointly realizable.
Concerning (ii), it is allowed that an agent takes some of the members
of the range to be conjointly realizable, e.g. one might
debate whether to go to the butcher's, go to the baker's, or stay home while
believing the first two to be compossibic. Reference to the totality of the elements
in the range is presupposed. If by deliberative content we understand
a set of courses of action about which one deliberates, then a main
assumption throughout has been: a set of courses of action is a deliberative
content for an agent only if he presumes it to be a range of open alternatives for
him. The converse does not hold; a sense of the relative significance of the
included items seems required to secure a place in any deliberative
content. That is, the presump- tion of open alternatives is only a necessary
condition for deliberation.
Some fine points can be touched upon. For one thing, it may be
erroneous to speak of the deliberative content if an agent can
carry on several deliber- ations simultaneously. Also, adjustments concerning
temporal parameters are needed to cover cases where a course of action
comes to be dropped from deliberative content during deliberation. Content
can fluctuate and what appears open at the onset of a deliberation may
lose this character as the process unfolds (or vice-versa). The failure of
the main assumption mentioned in the previous paragraph shows that
inclusion of a course of action in deliberative content does not guarantee
inclusion of its comple- ment. That is, one can deliberate about two "positive"
acts, say, whether to study French or Arabic, without consciously
considering the complements of either. (PO) demands only that if a course of action
appears open then so does its complement, not that if it is deliberated
about then so is its complement. IV. Indecision and Uncertainty
With (PO) and (POA) we have an analysis of a deliberator's presumption of open alternatives. The similarity of this account
to the Standard Interpre- tation is apparent, but there is a fundamental
divergence in the way each handles a deliberator's sense of contingency. It
remains to be seen whether (PO) and (POA) can be used to explain other features
of deliberation, specifically, a deliberator's state of uncertainty and
his sense that he is free to choose. First, we consider the former.
Taylor, Ginct and others have argued that one cannot deliberate about doing something if one already knows one will do it
(see note 13). Our hiker, for example, does not deliberate about the disjunctive
act of taking the path to the right or the one to the left if this is
something He has already decided upon and takes for granted he will do. His denial that
he can tell which path he will take and his words I've not yet made up my
mind' point not only to his ignorance or lack of belief about which
alternative he will undertake but also to his state of indecision. More directly, there
is a connection between deciding and believing what one will do which
indicates that (3), if accept- able, should be accompanied by:
(6) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he has
not already decided to A.
Initially, states of ignorance and indecision appear obvious as
antecedents to decision and, thus, as ingredients in the
presumption of open alternatives. However, objections have been raised against a
requirement of ignorance and, mutatis mutandis, against proposals like (3) and
(6).17 For example, it might he thought that a person could decide upon a
given course of action, believe he will succeed in his endeavour, and yet
deliberate about it. The hiker, having made up his mind to go left, may
continue to reflect upon his choice by considering likely benefits of going right
or by attempting to locate justificatory grounds for his preference. Though
still engaged in practical reasoning, he is no longer deliberating about whether
to go left; taking the left path, by supposition, has already been settled. On
the other hand, his subsequent thought may cause him to doubt the wisdom
of his choice, deliberate anew about the action, or even abandon his
previous decision. This possibility shows, at least, that (3) and (6)
cannot stand in the form given. Modified versions might insist that one cannot
take (j)-ing as open while at the same time intending to A and believing
one will A. But even these amendments face difficulties. Take the case of Mr.
Hawkins who at 10 a.m. not only decides to take his son bowling at 3 p.m.
and acquires a belief that he will do so but also instructs his secretary to
remind him of this at 2:45 p.m. At 2:44 p.m., preoccupied with the day's
business and having tempor- arily overlooked his earlier resolve, he suddenly
deliberates about whether to play golf or to treat his son to a few games of
bowling at 3 p.m. Has he abandoned his previous decision? Not necessarily;
that he sustains his intention is evidenced by his ready acceptance of his
secretary's reminder at 2:45 p.m., which reveals his existing dispositions
not only to affirm that he will take his son bowling but to have a volition to
do so. Plainly, the contrast of occurrent with dispositional states applies to
intentions as much as to beliefs and, when coupled with the fact that agents
can overlook or forget what they have previously accepted, this renders (3)
and (6) open to such counterexamples.18 Schema (4) falls prey to
these as well insofar as Hawkins, by satisfying (PE), views his decision as a
determining factor, and, with further modifications, the example casts doubt upon
the more restricted ignorance requirement.
How, then, are we to interpret the hiker's response to the second ques-
tion? That a decision terminates a period of
indecision seems beyond doubt and lends immediate credence to Ginet's claim that
decision involves change from a state of uncertainty into a kind of
knowledge.19 Restricting (3), (4) and (6) to occurrent beliefs and intendings might appear
the best that can be hoped for. However, a different sort of problem
follows upon this sugges- tion. The consequents of the conditions so modified
still embody negation with larger scope than the (occurrent) attitude.
Ascribing no positive attitude to deliberators, therefore, they add nothing to the
content of the agent's sense of openness and, consequently, are of no
assistance in analyzing the hiker's awareness that he has not yet made up his
mind, i.e., his feeling of indecision. To capture the latter we need, not (6),
but a more complex presumption of indecision:
(PI) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he presumes that
he has not yet decided whether or not to A.20
This condition does not do full justice to the hiker's admission of
ignor- ance. Being undecided falls short of a more
encompassing state of uncer- tainty, for it is conceivable that a person might
predict his own future undertaking without having yet decided upon it.
Recalling our previous observations, a deliberator's prediction cannot be
ruled out when construed dispositionally, and the mere exclusion of an
occurrent attitude contributes little in analyzing the attitudes identified with a
state of uncertainty. Feeling uncertain, while extending beyond a state of
indecision, is not simply a condition of ignorance, and, for that reason, (3) is
deficient. A more suitable means of accommodating the hiker's second response is
a presumption of uncertainty:
(PU) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he presumes
that he does not yet believe whether or not he will A.
So, we can avoid the difficulties attending (3) and its suggested
modifica- tions, yet provide an immediate account of the hiker's
professed ignorance. What is essential to realize is that the consequents
of (PU) and (PI) describe a state of uncertainty which, being sensitive to cases
like those of Mr. Hawkins, preserves the core of Ginet's insight about
decision.
These proposals are not unrelated. A minimally rational agent under- stands that if something is or will be caused to occur
then it will occur and, thus that if he does not yet believe that it will
occur then he does not believe that it is or will be caused to occur. That is, on the
rationality proviso, (PU) yields:
(PS) an agent presumes that his A-ing is an open alternative for him only if he presumes
that he does not yet believe that there are conditions sufficient
for his A-ing or for his not A-ing.
By satisfying the consequents of both (PS) and (PE), in addition, a
delibera- tor realizes he is not committed to the existence of
conditions sufficient for his choice to A or not to A. If, by (PU), he presumes
he does not believe (know) that he will A, then, by (PS) and (PE), he
presumes he has not yet decided to A. That is, on the proviso, not only is
(PS) a consequence of (PU), but (PI) follows from (PU) together with (PE).
What about (PU) itself; can it be established on the basis of (PO)? The
answer, I think, is yes, assuming, once again,
minimal rationality. Suppose that a deliberator satisfies (PC); if he takes his
A-ing not to be contingent with respect to a set S then he will not regard S as
a set of his own beliefs. Since he is rational, he does not think his A-ing to
be contingent with respect to the set consisting solely of the proposition that
he As at the time in question. So, he does not view the latter as a set of
his own beliefs, that is, he believes that he does not believe he will A at that
time. Therefore, he satisfies (PU), and the sense of uncertainty emerges
as a dimension of the contingency assumption.
What we have with (PU) and its derivatives (PI) and (PS), in sum, is
not a deliberator's ignorance or indecision but, more
cautiously, his disposition to affirm his own non-commitment to a specific
alternative. This in no way implies that one who is conscious of being committed
to A-ing feels compelled to A; he may correctly assume that he is able to
refrain from A-ing in that he would refrain were he to so choose. But while his
A-ing may be seen as a possible alternative in this conditional sense, he
still might not take it as open. To see this, we need only to remind ourselves of the
frequent claim that one cannot do a certain thing because one has already
decided to do something else, and not because one's will would not be
efficacious as regards that act.
Finally, a new light is cast upon the hiker's statement that he is
unaware of anything causing him to choose one way or the other,
indeed, that he is "free" to undertake either; his presumption of
freedom includes recognition of both his own uncertainty and lack of intentional
resolve. As such, (PU) codifies an additional feature of a deliberator's
assumption of an open future and causal independency from the past -- without the
more sweeping imputations of ignorance and indetenninistic beliefs.
That it is a conse- quence of (PO), given a modest assumption of
rationality, is an indication of the latter's strength. VI. Freedom to Choose
The largest hurdle remains; does the foregoing do justice to Kant's
insight that a deliberator's presumption of open alternatives
is an assumption of freedom? Much depends upon what precisely is meant by
'freedom' here, but (PO) and (POA) do embody elements central to any
reliable account of practical freedom, specifically, (i) of ability to
act, (ii) of contingency of the eventual undertaking, and (iii) of non-commitment to a
particular alternative. It is a deliberator's sense of (i)-(iii) -- within a
context fixed by what he himself takes to be the case - that is his presumption of
freedom and self-agency. In this way, the above account presents a genuine
philosophical contrast to the Standard Interpretation which construes freedom in
terms of undetermined choice. Nevertheless, more is needed to show that the
agent thereby takes himself as free to choose from among the alternatives
before him.
It has already been remarked that (PO) explains certain cases of non- deliberation, e.g., why Nadia does not deliberate
about eating chocolate ice cream, or, why a compulsive truth-teller -- aware of
his irresistible desires -- does not consider lying to his best friend. In both,
the agent takes himself as unable to choose, and it is failure to satisfy (PC)
and (PS) that makes the difference. In other cases both (PC) and (PS) might
be satisfied but (PE) not: consider a man in a room with a single door he
believes to be locked but who knows that at 11 a.m. it will either be flung open or
remain locked; he cannot deliberate about whether to open the door at 11 a.m.
since he does not envision his will as efficacious in the matter. Van
Inwagen describes a man in a room with two doors, one of which he believes to be
locked and the other unlocked though he does not know which, suggesting
that he cannot deliber- ate about which door to leave by. Failure to satisfy
(PE), once again, can account for this, though it need not prevent the man
from deliberating about which door to try. On the other hand, if deliberating
about trying to A is, by that very fact, deliberating about A -- thereby
disputing the example -- then the probability qualifiers implicit in (PE) lend it a
desired flexibility.
How do we characterize the deliberator's presumption that he is free to
choose, that he has both the ability to choose to A
and the ability to choose not to A (or, to refrain from choosing A)? Consider
Nadia who, having ruled out chocolate, is still faced with a decision about
which of the remaining 32 flavours to order. Suppose that she satisfies both
(PE) and (PC) as regards each alternative; does she, therefore, find herself
free to choose? If at all adequate, our analysis must sustain an affirmative
response. But here comes a challenge. Imagine that Nadia consciously believes
what the local astro- loger told her, namely, there is a certain flavour
such that it is already determined she will not choose it, though she has no
idea which flavour this is. Assume, moreover, that she is not so irrational
as to also believe her not choosing this flavour to be undetermined. Can she
deliberate about which kind of ice cream to order? We come to a critical
parting of ways; Nadia's deliberation is permitted as far as (PO) is
concerned, but the Standard Interpretation must rule it out. That is, since Nadia
now fails to believe of each alternative that not choosing it is
undetermined, she does not take it as unqualifiedly contingent, and so, by the Standard
Interpretation, her deliberation would be pointless', realizing that her
choice is not entirely "under her control", Nadia must remain without ice
cream.
This latter assessment seems unreasonable. Why shouldn't the following thoughts convince Nadia, and ourselves, that
deliberation here does have a point? Look, I am hungry for ice cream and I want to
select a kind that is both tasty and filling. I have definite likes and
dislikes and I know I will order a given flavour just in case I choose to do so.
Moreover, I will choose a flavour only through a conscious effort on my part,
even if it is already deter- mined, by the stars or whatever, that I will not
choose one of them, whichever it might be. As far as I can tell the
matter is entirely under my control: I can choose any one of the 32 flavours even
though, at this stage, I am undecided as to which. I must, in any case, try
something and it is only through deliberation that I will make the best
choice.
In attributing to Nadia the belief that she is already determined not
to choose one of the flavours we are not supposing that
she will be, or believes she will be, prevented from so doing, i.e., that she
would fail were she to somehow try to choose one of the flavours. At the
same time, in analyzing her claim that she takes herself as able to choose we
cannot simply ascribe a belief that there is no obstacle preventing her from
carrying out her will, and in this, ability to choose differs from ability to do
(which does involve such a belief). But certain analogies persist. That X can A
implies that it is possible that X As, and it is essential that what is
said to be possible is an action of X's, as distinct from a mere bodily
movement where agency is not so implied. Similarly, to say X can choose to A implies
that it is possible that X chooses to A and, with this, X continues to be viewed
as an agent, a maker of choices, and not merely a passive object in some
event or state-of-affairs.
The substantive claim concerns not agency but modality; when Nadia assumes it possible that she chooses any of the 32
flavours, the doxastic interpretation suffices to unpack the modality.
Notice that her situation is not akin to one who feels he "has no choice" in the usual
sense that his will would not be efficacious, e.g., one who does not
deliberate about hovering unaided above the floor. Nor is it that of the
compulsive truth-teller who finds himself unable to lie to a friend; thinking
that he cannot choose to lie because of his own internal condition he fails to
satisfy the consequent ol (PC). Nadia, on the contrary, retains a sense of an
open future to be partially completed by actions resultant upon choices which she
yet takes as contin- gent given circumstances as she undentands them. Her
sense of an ability to choose consists in her presumptions that (i) her
choosing to order any of the 32 flavours is contingent relative to what she then
believes; (ii) she does not believe of any flavour that there are conditions
sufficient for her choosing it or for her not choosing it; and (iii) her choosing is
a conscious effort of her own. Both (i) and (ii) follow directly from (PO),
while (iii) is a result of her having a concept of what a choice (an intention) is.
More briefly, Nadia's sense of the contingency of what she is to choose,
together with her conception of a choice as a conscious effort on her
part, is her presumption of an ability to choose. Coupling this with her
belief in the efficacy of her will and her desires to have the future completed in this
way rather than that. we have all that is needed to give deliberation a
"point".
This conclusion remains in force even if Nadia assumes that her
choosing precisely one of the flavours, whatever it might be,
is already determined, viz., even if Nadia is a full-blown determinist. At
this point, no doubt, we arrive at a vivid clash of intuitions, perhaps, to a
conflict that can only be settled by appeal to experimental psychology. But, at
this level, the leap to the unqualified sense of 'can', or absolute
contingency, has been premature. The doxastic characterization of the modality
embedded in a dcliberator's sense of ability cannot be disqualified if it has yet
to be articulated and subjected to proper test.21
Principles (PO) and (POA) can also be used to explain a deliberator's awareness or feeling of freedom. Of course, this
feeling is not an invariant companion of deliberation; it emerges only when a
measure of contemplative thinking overlays the process of practical reasoning,
of deciding what to do, or how, or when to do it. This does not negate the
fact that the feeling is of something that permeates deliberation all along. Of
what? Not the act of choosing, for this is precisely what terminates
awareness of indecision, contingency and an open future.22 Instead, the
agent's focus is now upon his ability to think and act within a context fixed by
his own doxastic and intentional states; the feeling is the activation of
the dispositions ascribed in (PO) and (POA).
Like its competitor, the doxastic interpretation preserves the indeter-
minacy of the future. More than this; it comprehends
a factor that the Standard Interpretation cannot. A person who
deliberates about whether to eat an apple, an orange or a peach may claim to be
conscious that nothing causally necessitates his choice. Is there not some
sense in which he is epistemically justified, by his experience, in saying
that he is free to eat any of the fruit? An affirmative response not only provides
grounds for distinguish- ing between the experience and the mere rehearsal of
belief, it nicely explains the universality and conviction with which
the assumption of free- dom is held. This is no brute endorsement
ofindeterminism; the deliberator who says he is free as far as he can tell may very
well be justified in so doing, for the contingency is there, detectable within his
experiential content. But there is no reason to suppose that he can similarly
be justified -- by his experience -- in claiming that he is free with
respect to all past and present conditions, even if this latter claim is true. It is
the doxastic interpretation that is on firmer footing here, and the deliberator's
choice is determined, then it is this view which avoids the uncomfortable
conclusion that his experience, not just his belief, is purely
illusory.23 IV. Concluding Remarks
Although the preceding discussion has centered on deliberation, it is
likely that the proposals culminating in (PO) and (POA) have
a wider applicability. For one thing, they seem to pertain to all choice,
even that which does not emerge from conscious deliberation, insofar as
decision involves a selection among presumed alternatives. Perhaps they govern all
intention as well; what is the point of intending something which is not
taken as open at some time before intending it? If so, then each intention is a
choice, minimally, between a course of action and its complement, and we can
appreciate anew Kant's insistence that a presupposition of freedom underlies
all practical thought. Additionally, the proposals imply that an omniscient
being cannot deliberate, choose, or perhaps, intend - a consequence of no
small theological impor- tance if creativity, perfection, or omnipotence
necessitate such abilities.24 It remains to be seen what relevance they have for the
overall free will controversy, though there is every reason to suspect
a firm and fruitful linkage.
The spectacle of a determinist who deliberates is at first perplexing.
What is the point of deliberating if whatever
one chooses and does is already determined? What difference can one's own
deliberations possibly make? Faced with such questions, some conclude that we are,
by our very nature as rational agents, indeterminists - an idea which can
only disturb the deter- minist who takes his actions and volitions to be the
outcome of antecedent factors while retaining a passion for consistency.
Agreeing that an agent has a sense of the contingency of his own future, I have
urged that the modality is indexed to what he himself
assumes to be the case; it need
not be
a presumption of the non-existence of any determining
conditions whatever. No more is required to give deliberation a point than
the agent's ends, his belief that those ends will not be realized except
through his own intentional activity, and his sense of freedom based, in part,
upon his incomplete grasp of the future. If forgetfulness, as Nietzsche once
wrote, is a precondition of action, an imperfect conception of what will be is no
less essential. Practi- cally-minded determinists, haunted by the spectres of
inconsistency and fatalism, can be encouraged by this account of the
matter.25 Endnotes
1. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
(Bobbs-Menrill, 1949) p. 65, translation by T, K. Abbott
of Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, originally published in
1785.
2.This interpretation is strongly suggested by what Kant says elsewhere
in the same work, for example, pp. 63, 69-79, 73-78, and
various commentators have urged this reading, e.g., H. G. Paton
in the introduction to his translation of the Grundlegung (New York,
1964), pp. 46-48.
3. Hector-Neri Castaneda, Thinking and Doing (Dordrecht. 1975),
pp. 134-5. Again on p. 312 of this work, he writes
that ". . . to the consciousness of an agent making deliberations: (i)
he appears free to choose from alternative courses of action; (ii) his
choices appear uncaused. . . ."
4. wood Cliffs, 1966), pp. 178-182 and in Metaphysics
(Englewood
Cliffs, 1974) 2nd edition, pp. 53-55. See also his
"Deliberation
and Foreknowledge", American Philosophical Quarterly I (1964),
pp. 73-80. Similar views are espoused by Carl Ginet, "Might We
Have
No Choice?", in Keith l.ehrer, ed.. Freedom and Determinism
(New
York, 1966), pp. 87-104; J. M. Boyle, G. Grisez and
0. Tollefsen,
Free Choice (Notre Dame 1976); andJ. W. Lamb, "On A Proof of
Incompatibilism", Philosophical Review 86 (1977).
5. Nicholas Denyer, Time, Action & Necessity: a proof of free
will
(London, 1981), p, 5, and see also pp. 39-42 and 65-6.
Central
to his position is a denial of true future contingents, so that
even if one does A at time t (when this is a result of his choice) it
is
not true beforehand that he will A at t. Cf. my review of
Denyer's
book in Nous 18 (1984).
6. Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford, 1983), p. 160.
7. I am assuming, thus, that the presumptions are to be taken in
what is sometimes called a de se sense, see David Lewis,
"Attitudes
De Dido and De Re", in his Philosophical Papers (Oxford
1981), pp. 133-59. A view that I find congenial is Castaneda's
where
the latter occurrences of 'he' in (PE) are
quasi-indicators, that
is, devices we have for attributing indexical reference to others.
See his "He: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness", Ratio 8
(1966),
pp. 130-57; "Indicators and Quasi-indicators", American
Philnsophical
Quarterly 4 (1967), pp. 85-100; and sophical Association 53 (1980), pp. 763-822. He
has argued in these and other papers that quasi-indicators
cannot
be replaced by third-person designations and, thus, that
first-person reference is irreducible to third-person
reference.
8. Compare Castaneda's illuminating discussion of the locution
'feels that' in "Philosophical Method and Direct Awareness
of the Self",
Grazer Philosophische Studien 7/8 (1979), pp. 1-58.
9. The literature on the conditional analysis of freedom is
copious. Besides Moore's classic work, Ethics (Oxford,
1912), ch. 6. echoing
long standing views of John I,ocke, Jonathan Edwards,
et.
al. there is also, J. L. Austin, "Ifs and Cans",
Proceedings
of the British Academy 42 (1956), pp.!09-132; R. Chisholm,
"J.
L. Austin's Philosophical Papers", Mind 73 (1964); K. Lehrer,
"An Empirical Disproof of Determinism", in Lehrer, ed.. Freedom
and
Determinism, K. Lehrer, "Cans Without Ifs", Analysis 29 (1968), pp. 29-32; D.
Davidson,
"Freedom to Act", in his Essays on Actions (Oxford, 1980),
pp.
63-82; and A. E. Falk, "Some Modal Confusions conceded
that
Moore's attempt to construe 'I can' in terms of 'I shall, if I
choose'
fails, though it is disputed what this means for the larger
questions
of determinism, compatibilism and freedom.
10. See Wilfred Sellars, "Thought and Action", in Lehrer, ed.
Freedom and Determinism, who mentions not only the threat
of a regress
that such an analysis engenders but also that it mistakenly
construes
volitions as actions to be brought about by yet further acts of
will.
See, however, Lehrer's treatment of the regress in
"Preferences,
Conditionals and Freedom", in van Inwagen, ed., Time and
Cause
(Dordrecht, 1980), pp. 187-201, as well as Krister Segerberg's
discussion of Lehrer in "Could Have But Did Not", Pacific
Philosophical
Quarterly 64 (1983), pp. 230-41.
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1140a, and see Richard
Sorabji's endorsement of this reading in Necessity, Cause,
and Blame: Perspectives
on Aristotle's Theory (London, 1980), pp. 228 and 245. Compare
Denyer, of. cil., pp. 30, 40-2, and R. Burton, "Choice", Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 42 (1982) pp. 581-6. In speaking
of P as contingent
I mean, throughout, the conjunction of the possibility of P
with
the possibility of not-P.
12. This notion of a relativized modality must be handled with some
care to avoid unnecessary confusion. My preference is to
construe
the relation of consequence, employed in the definiens, in
a generic sense, not to be restricted to the narrower concept of
logical
consequence unless otherwise specified. This has a great
deal
to do with whether the set S includes laws or nomological
propositions
or laws are principles underlying the consequence relation.
I
refer the reader to my "On the Concept of Material Consequence", History and
Philosophy
of Logic 3 (1982), pp. 193-211, for an extended discussion
of
extra-logical consequence. For more about rela-
tivized
modality, see Hans Reichenbach, Elements of Symbolic Logic (New
York,
1975), p. 396; T. Smiley, "Relative Necessity", Journal of
Symbolic
Logic 28 (1963), pp. 113-34; and I.L. Humberstone,
"Relative
Necessity Revisited", Reports on Mathematical Logic 13 (1981),
pp. 33-42. J. W. Lamb, op. cit., and others have used the term
'categorical'
instead of 'unqualified' in discussing a deliberator's
assumption
of freedom, though with much the same meaning.
13. See Section IV below. R. T'aylor in "Deliberation and
Foreknowledge" and again in Action and Purpose, pp. 174-6,
has contended that
one cannot know, while deliberating, which course of action
he
will eventually undertake, a claim also endorsed in C. Ginet,
"Can
the Will Be Caused?", Philosophical Review 71 (1962),
pp.49-55;
A. N. Prior, Papers on Time and Tense (Oxford,
1968), pp.
47-8; A. Goldman, Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs,
1970), p. 195; and Denyer, op. cit., p. 48.
Taylor's
argumentation, in particular, supports the stronger claim that a deliberator cannot have a belief that he
will
perform this or that alternative, as he himself realizes in
"Deliberation
and Foreknowledge", p. 77.
14. Peter van Inwagen has suggested that the variable 'S' in a
principle like (PC) be restricted to sets of beliefs the
agent takes to
be consistent "since not everyone will be willing to assume
that his own beliefs are consistent, and since, presumably, no
proposition
is contingent relative to an inconsistent set of beliefs,"
(in
comments at the American Philosophical Association meetings
(Western Division) April 1984). I have two reservations about
accepting
this qualifica- tion: (1) While it may be that there is
someone
who is not willing to assume his own beliefs to be consistent,
it docs not follow that he takes them to be inconsistent. He may
simply
be in a state of suspending judgment on the consistency of
his
own beliefs since few, if any, can rest content with
a recognized
inconsistency. (2) I do not rule out considerations of relevance in a
proper account of logical consequence, thus, am reluctant
to accept
the view that every proposition is a consequence of an
inconsistent
set. 15. Casteneda, Denyer and van Inwagen, has, to my
knowledge,
seriously considered or, at least, directly discussed,
an
alternative explication of the modality involved in a deliberator's
sense
of an open alternative.
16. See, for example, van Inwagen, op. cit., p. 155. The existence of
hypothetical deliberation suggests that intentions and,
thus, courses of action,
can be conditional in form, a point that has long been
urged
by Castaneda. See, for instance, his Thinking and Doing, pp. 160
ff.,
and also his "Reply to Sellars", in Agent, Language, and
the
Structure of the World (New York, 1983), ed., J.
E.Tomberlin,
pp. 419-33, and compare D. Davidson, op. cit., pp. 92-4. This
underscores
the previous assertion about the limited nature of (PO)
in
the form given. I might add that, according to the way
(PO) is
stated, the very item that is presumed open and deliberated about
seems to be the same as that which is said to be
contingent in clause
(ii). I do not wish to be terminology, wherein the thing
deliberated
about is a practition and the thing viewed as contingent is a
proposition. See Castaneda's Thinking and Doing, passim.
17. Ginct's advocacy oflhe ignorance condition in "Can The Will
Be Caused?", for example, has spawned a number of critics
including
J. Canfield, "Knowing About Future Decisions",
Analysis
22 (1962), pp. 127-9; J. W. R. Cox, "Can I Know Beforehand What I
Am
Going to Decide?" Philosophical Review 72 (1963), pp.
88-92;
and M. Stocker, "Knowledge, Causation and Decision",
Nous
2 (1968), pp. 65-73. Richard La Croix has also advocated the
ignorance condition in "Omniprescience and Divine
Determinism", Religious
Studies (1976), pp. 365-81, but Phillip Quinn has argued to the contrary in
"Divine
Foreknowledge and Divine Freedom", International Journal
for
Philosophy of Religion 9 (1978), pp. 219-40. I have also
discussed
the issue in "Can God Make Up His Mind?", 15
International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1984), pp. 37-47,
particularly
as it bears on the La Croix/Quinn debate.
18. In this context a distinction must be drawn between formulating a
decision, i.e., making up one's mind, and rehearsing that
decision, viz.,
consciously affirming an intention already held. Castaneda's
work on intentions is especially relevant here, see Thinking and
Doing,
pp. 275-8.
19. Ginet, "Can The Will Be Caused?", p. 51. Brian O'Shaughnessy
in The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory (Cambridge, 1980), p.
297, also
endorses a claim of this sort saying that a necessary condition
of decision is that it resolves a state of uncertainty about what
to
do.
20. I take it as obvious that the phrase 'whether or not' occurring in
(PI),
and also in (PU) below, indicates a conjunction of denials
of
belief falling within the scope of 'presumes'.
21. It might be charged that I have dealt unfairly with the
Standard Interpretation inasmuch as its adherents do offer
arguments in
its favour. Arguments yes, but arguments whose inadequacy
is due to a failure to explore alternative explications of
'possible'
and 'determined'. In "Might We Have No Choice?" Ginet, for
instance,
has argued in the following manner: a deliberator must
believe
that his eventual choice is effeclive, i.e., that he "has" a
choice
(pp. 92-93); determinism, however, entails that our choices
are
always ineffective (pp. 90, 93): hence, anyone who
believes
in determinism either cannot choose at all or else is aware that
he
is constantly deluded - an "implausible" if not "impossible"
condition
to be in (pp. 93, 104). What is the meaning of 'effective'
and
'has a choice' in this argument? From his examples of the
prisoner and the child in an amusement park, one's choice
to A is
ineffective if one's choice is not an essential factor in
determining
whether one will A. But a determinist need not believe his choice
is ineffective in thif sense; if he satisfies the efficacy
assumption
then he obviously thinks that his intentions are essential
components
in causal chains leading up to his actions, and this is
compatible with the belief that his intentions and actions are
already
determined. On the other hand, if an effective choice is, by definition, an
undtternincd
choice, as the discussion on pp. 90-92 suggests, then it is
the
initial premise of Ginet's argument that demands further
defence. In either case, the argument as it stands poses no
obstacles
to the proposed theory. On the contrary, since the position
to
which the deliberating determinist is forced by the Standard
Interpretation is indeed implausible, it is a virtue of our
proposals
that they rescue the determinist from this doxastic
quagmire.
22. Here I go against the suggestion offered by Douglas Browning
in "The Feeling of Freedom", Review of Metaphysics 18
(1964), pp.
123-46, who writes: "The long sought feeling of
freedom
is no other than the experience of the act of choice itself as it is
performed,
as it must he performed, within the practical stance" (p.
145).
Compare, Boyle, Griscz and Tollefsen, op. cit.,
pp.
18-20.
23. Boyle, Grisez and Tollefsen, ap. eil., pp. 20-3, are also
careful to distinguish the experience of freedom from the
judgment that
one is free. That an awareness of freedom would be virtually impossible
if freedom is analyzed in terms of unqualified contingency has
been
emphasized by J. W. Corman and K. Lehrer in Philosophical
Problems
and Arguments, (New York, 1968), pp. 131-47.
24. I refer the reader to the papers by La Croix, Quinn, and
myself listed in note 17 above.
25. I am indebted to Hector-Neri Castaneda for the valuable
comments and criticisms provided during the development of
this paper,
to J. Christopher Maloney who years first kindled my
interest
in deliberation, and to Robert Audi, Robert Good, Hugh Harcourt,
Steven Lee, Al Mele, Ron Miller, George Nakhniliian, Mark
Pastin,
Lynn Stephens, Eric Stiffler, and Leslie Stevenson for
their helpful
comments on earlier versions.----------------------------------------------
This article comes from The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 36 No. 14
(1986), 230-251
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